Truth Unites - The Hyper-Masculinity Problem in the Church

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund responds to a recent criticism about a worship song not being masculine enough. Check out the Pro Ecclesia conference: https://www.pro-ecclesia.org/2024 Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

What my heart burns for is that young men, a lot of my viewers are young men, that you would see something beautiful that's neither of these two alternatives. Christ is the great mountain. If we focus upon Christ, we can't go astray. Recently, there was a controversy on Twitter where a pastor was criticizing one of the songs at the Shepherds Conference as effeminate. He said, Bob Coughlin leading congregational singing is all the reason needed to not attend Shepard's Conference.

Call it a personal preference if you like, but there's a weird, effeminate vibe I get for much the modern attempts to write corporate worship music. He got pushback, so he defended his tweet, and he posted a clip about two minutes of the song, Jesus, Thank You, and he said it is a distinctly effeminate vibe. Here's a little portion of what he posted. Now, I'm not going to link to the tweet or talk about that pastor specifically at a kind of personal angle. I've talked about this before. The way we do these pylons on Twitter is often unhelpful, or not to criticize. anybody who's commenting on Twitter, but just the way it plays out where it's like these controversies flare up and then we move on to the next thing so quickly, and it creates more

heat than light in many cases. So I waited about a week or more before commenting. Cultural commentary is a very tricky balance. I feel very, you know, hesitant about having a YouTube channel. Please believe me, if you ever see me making a mistake, I'm holding this with fear and trembling before the Lord. I know the power of social media and I want to use it right. And part of that is I don't want to ever respond in a way that's sort of opportunistic commenting on things. But the thing is, we have to be able to talk about these issues that come up, you know. And I really am concerned about this, and I really feel a burden for younger men in our culture and the vision of masculinity that is being put in front of them in many cases. And so this

whole episode, without wanting to kind of pile on to anybody or respond in a way where you're, you know, getting into the controversy just for the sake of that. Nonetheless, this whole episode gives us an occasion to ask this question of what is masculinity? And how should Christians, those followers of Christ like myself who want to be faithful to Christ right now and the weird times we live in, how do we respond to what's going on in our culture? And basically in this video, I want to articulate a concern about hyper-masculinity. And my goal is that somebody could leave this video at least having a little more sensitivity or categories for that possible danger, even if, you know, believe me, I'm not.

I know. People watch you gracious people out there who watch my YouTube videos, even though you don't agree with me on so many of these things. It's humbling, and I appreciate it. But I hope, you know, at the basic heart level here, a lot of us, I hope this wouldn't be too controversial of what I'm saying here. Here's the basic idea, what's on my heart. We live in a time in the modern West where revisionist views of masculinity specifically and just gender and sexuality more generally are being aggressively advanced. As the church, we feel that pressure. And in order to be faithful to Christ, we want to respond to that with courage and with steadfastness and oppose that pressure. It really matters how we think about things like masculinity and femininity and so forth.

Right now, young men are not doing well. Young men are three times as likely to commit suicide than young women. They are going to college less, dropping out of the workforce more. the addictions, you know, addiction rates are climbing mental health struggles and everybody's suffering in the world right now in different ways. But young men are suffering greatly. And I understand why, and I agree with Christians who want to push back against the prevailing cultural winds, many of which are causing this or contributing to this at the same time. There is a concern of people going too far in the other direction and promoting a kind of unhealthy hyper-masculinity. So the broader dynamic here would be a kind of fundamentalism.

Now, one of my commenters commented recently, I'm aware that I have people who watch my videos from all different backgrounds. I feel so honored by that. I have atheist viewers. I have fundamentalist viewers. One person recently said, you know, what's wrong with fundamentalism? Fair question. I never mean that as a term of derision in an ungodly way.

And originally the term wasn't bad. But it has come to mean some – basically, I have two concerns about fundamentalism. One would be the mentality with fundamentalists is often ungodly. It's often angry and aggressive. That's what that word often connotes. But the more basic thing would just be I could summarize it with the word overreaction. I think fundamentalism is wrong because it overreacts from one error into the opposite extreme. So it overreacts from liberalism and just clamps down.

And this is where a lot of errors happen throughout human history is overreaction. So with respect to masculinity specifically, I think this is a danger. In the midst of the kind of just crazy stuff that we're seeing, and especially from a secular angle, though secularism is not monolithic and always the same. And we can kind of play this up too much sometimes. But nonetheless, there's real pressure against us. but a lot of people are overreacting, going into a kind of overfocus on masculinity or a hyper-masculinity that I believe is unhealthy, and my ultimate concern here is unbiblical.

I think it goes beyond the text of Scripture. I think it's off-center from the character of Christ, and Christ should be our definition of masculinity. And I deeply, deeply desire that young men in our society understand they don't just have these two options of either, you go completely with secular culture, or you go in this kind of hyper-masculent direction. I think as one who holds to traditional views on marriage and sexuality and gender, I want to also throw out three concerns of what I'm seeing that are really serious problems in the hyper-masculine direction, where that can just become unbiblical. Number one, stereotyping, number two, legalism, and number three, ugliness.

So number one, stereotyping. The danger here is that it's easy to confuse a particular expression of masculinity, or for that matter, femininity, with the thing itself and the essence of it. There are biblical principles about masculinity, for example, that are immovable. They don't change. But then there are cultural and personality expressions of those principles that can and do vary. And so there's a huge danger that we need to be aware of of conflating the cultural expression or the personality expression with the thing itself. easy example. In a marriage, is it a biblical mandate that the husband always changes the oil to the car and the wife always does the dishes? No. It's nowhere in scripture. And it's moderated by culture. You're not sinning if you're in a marriage where you don't act like that. That's fine. And we need to be careful of conflating the expression culturally and personality-wise from the biblical mandate. Now, why is this so important? I think people are often naive about how much cultural

variation there is about the nature of masculinity. And I think in the debates about toxic masculinity, they're playing out both sides sometimes representatives from both sides sometimes simplify the historical record and act like all sort of pre-modern culture is the same. And all modern Western thoughts are the same. But there's tremendous variation in how masculinity is understood culturally. And so this is just to, I'm not trying to say one of these is right or wrong. I'm just trying to help us be sensitive to this dynamic of lacing on the cultural to the biblical, if that makes sense. So, for example, Western perceptions of masculinity are often more independent and competitive. In many Eastern and pre-modern contexts, it's considered very masculine to be loyal to your group or your tribe.

Devotion to your family, for example, very masculine. A man who, clirts with other women is seen as violating not just morality, but masculinity. And this is different from the modern West. You can be a kind of James Bond type, a kind of playboy type person and still be considered very masculine. And that's, I think, one of the blind spots of our culture. I've talked before about how loneliness, loneliness is one of the least seen and yet most destructive problems in our society. And so many young men are lonely. And we need to understand. being a fiercely independent person is not being more masculine. Another way you see cultural variation in how masculinity is perceived is how stoic we see masculinity.

To what extent does a real man show emotion and show a capacity for intimate friendship? To what extent is a man talkative and social, this kind of thing? And there's tremendous variation. In the ancient world, like a good model, a good interesting model is King David, where on the one hand, he's a soldier. He's a soldier, most of his adult life, he's like leading military blitzkriegs, and he's hiding in the caves with all of his soldier friends from Saul. And he's very comfortable on the battlefield. At the same time, he's a musician. He's a poet.

He's capable of deep intimacy and emotion. Look, read the book of Psalms. Think of his friendship with Jonathan, for example. there's so a lot of times you'll have a conception of masculinity that won't allow for that emotional, musical, you know, the full orbed, but there's nothing at all remotely unmasculine about the full range of David's personality. In fact, a lot of, this is where, again, everybody kind of simplifies the pre-modern and ancient views sometimes. Alexander the Great, another example of a military genius, but he was a very emotional person. He'd have these like public mornings when his friends would

die and this kind of thing. It's kind of interesting. Winston Churchill, incredibly courageous man. Nobody's going to say Winston Churchill is a feminine person, okay? I mean, read biography is a femme. He's kind of an amazing and interesting and complicated person. But you know what one of his biggest hobbies was? Painting. I've thought about this in other contexts about the importance of Sabbath rest during World War II, just during the time when the Nazis are pounding on the doorstep, so to speak, and it's the worst of the worst of times, he would go off in isolation and paint. He would go off to this like house in the country and do a ton, like just the number of paintings he did during that season of his life, let alone elsewhere. Now, there's nothing remotely

contrary to masculinity about painting, you know, but this is an example of where, you know, or you could look at other things, cooking. Is it masculine to cook and things like this? There's tremendous variation from one culture to another. And I'm not necessarily trying to say, you know, one culture is right versus another right now. I'll kind of say more about that in a second. Right now I'm just trying to draw attention to this to say how easy it is to add on personality dynamics and cultural expectations to what the scripture teaches. And in the case of this song, I think it's really concerning that this song would be labeled as feminine. It's like, what is that?

There's nothing biblical about that. It's just culture and preference and style and personality and this kind of stuff where we need to have more flexibility. It's not a biblical statement to call this song feminine. The lyrics are totally orthodox. The lyrics are very gospel-rich. It's all about substitutionary atonement. The fact that it has intimate expressions of love is not contrary. to masculinity any more than the hymn, my Jesus, I love thee. I know thou art mine is contrary to

masculinity. And the pastor who's criticizing this, though, seems to get that. He seems to be saying, you know, it's more the style and the culture and the overall vibe of the song. But that's precisely where we need to be more careful about conflating the scripture and then issues of style and preference with respect to masculinity, especially if you're going to air your opinions, it's kind of, frankly, kind of insulting a brother in Christ who's leading everybody in worship. Okay, why is that so important? Because of the second thing that I want to address, and that's the danger of legalism, which I was trying to get these categories done into one word. But to expand that and unpack that, what's really on my mind is the danger of going beyond what is written in

scripture. It's easy to add on. You know, this is why actually obeying God's commandments is so freeing, because you don't have to make up new ones. You just stick with the ones he gave us. and I think a lot of people are more afraid of subtracting from God's commandments than adding on to God's commandments. But actually, both of those are really problematic. To subtract and to add from the commandments of Scripture is a problematic. Ten years ago already, I can't believe it's been ten years, I wrote an article about dangers for complementarians, and I talked about how sometimes Christians are more afraid of affirming what is forbidden in Scripture than forbidding what is affirmed. and how sometimes complementarians, because I know I got a lot of egalitarian friends, God bless you,

I'm a complementarian. And I, you know, but I receive some of their criticisms and I understand some of them. Sometimes we're undersensitive to dangers in this direction, where we really downplay. We don't understand how much scripture is actually going to challenge all the views today. scripture will subvert progressive egalitarian mindsets of points, I believe, as a complementarian, I believe that. Reading through these passages in the New Testament that Paul wrote, you know, yeah, they're there, but it's also going to subvert. And by the way, for an egalitarian watching who's frustrated, I'm not developing that.

Sorry, it's just not the purpose of this video. I do have another video on complementarianism where I explain why I'm a complimentarian. But my point right now is that scripture is also going to push against sins and errors in the other direction, in the hypermasculine direction. Scripture will correct traditional patriarchal mindsets at various points. What scripture portrays will be an alternative, not just to 21st century Manhattan, but to ancient India, ancient South America, medieval Europe. There's all kinds of, for example, let's say you live in an extremely hierarchical society. Whatever the man says goes in his household, men are considered more important than women. They've way more social status than women, this kind of thing.

Okay, what the Bible teaches is not just going to come along and baptize that and say, that's perfect just the way it is. On the contrary, let me put up this verse on the slide or on the screen. This is a radically socially subversive vision of masculinity. It's not egalitarianism, this verse in Ephesians 5. There is a distinct role of leadership for the husband, but it is a radically socially subversive vision. It's a Christ modeled leadership. You're literally dying for the other.

It's beautiful. It's loving. It's gentle. It's safe and it's kind. But it's also courageous and tough and manly. And Ephesians 5 is not how marriages work in patriarchal cultures. Okay. It's not egalitarian either, but it's this kind of self-sacrificial service.

And I think we often fail to appreciate how the Bible is much more progressive, quote, unquote, relative to other ancient cultures than we realize today. So creation in the image of God, Genesis 1, both male and female. The Fifth Commandment, honor your father and your mother. Those two things alone are more than many societies would go. A lot of societies would say, honor your father. Proverbs 31 will be subversive for richly patriarchal ways of thinking. The role of women in the scripture, I mean, Joel too, quoted in Acts 2, male and female, get the Holy Spirit. There's female prophetesses all throughout the book of Acts, all throughout the Old Testament, Miriam, Deborah, Holda, Noah Daya, etc.

But the ultimate example in terms of scripture where I think hyper-masculinity just gets off of scripture and goes too far in the other direction would be Christ. If we make masculinity too stoic and too non-emotional, then Christ himself becomes not manly enough. You think of him weeping out. When Christ is weeping outside the tomb of Lazarus, you can tell, like, it's weeping and people are looking and they're saying, wow, he really loved him. When Christ says, I am gentle and lowly in heart, when Christ honors and dignifies and elevates women, doing ministry with women in Luke 8, bringing them with him. A lot of Jewish rabbis never would have done that. There's so much more to say here.

I said it more in that video on complementarianism, but the point I'm trying to make right now is it's possible to disobey the commands of Scripture in multiple directions. It's possible to subtract from them. It's also possible to add on to them. It's also possible to go further than them. And because of that, in this video, I guess I'm not trying to resolve everything. I'm trying to draw greater attention to this error over here that a lot of Christians are maybe a little undersensitive to, and that's hyper-masculinity. The third reason for that, and the summative one and briefest one is just what it all results in, and that it's not beautiful. hypermasculinity is often very ugly. Sometimes it's socially inept. Sometimes it's oblivious to the offense that it gives. It lacks tact. It's so zealous about fighting the culture that it doesn't live out the biblical commandments in a beautiful way. Let me just say it like this. Look, we are not called merely to be resistant to error. We are called to incarnate truth with beauty and love. And if we're not doing that, it's not like we're just getting a B-minus or, you know,

just falling a little short, we're actually taking a step backwards. Paul says, without love, no matter what gifting you have, you're a resounding symbol. If we don't have love in the way we incarnate masculinity, then people rightly will call us on it. And I'll notice, this is not beautiful. This is not good. When we see true masculinity, it's not safe. It's like Christ himself. It is a little bracing. You know, I'm a complimentarian. I believe. believe there is a real role of leadership given for men in the church and in the home. And it is offensive in our culture to many people. And I'll stand by that. I'll die for my beliefs. You know, I'm not just caving in here. It's just that I have such a high view of sin that I think

sin can manifest in the other direction as well. And like, let me give an example. Masculine, godly men don't harass women. But a lot of these people in this far right stream of evangelical Christianity or fundamentalist Christianity, they just harass people. It's just, they're just immature and distempered and ungodly. That's not masculinity. That's not Christ-like. And so what my heart burns for is that young men, a lot of my viewers are young men, that you would see something beautiful that's neither of these two alternatives that doesn't

negate mass. There is such a thing as masculinity, but masculinity is beautiful and like Jesus. It's not easy and comfortable, but it's beautiful. All right, let me leave you with this scene from, of course, C.S. Lewis, if you know anything about me, you know I love C.S. Lewis, especially the book, That Hidious Strength. I feel like I quote from this book, I've just listened to it so much, and it's so rich and interesting. There's a scene where the female character sees a man. There's no romantic dynamics to this at all.

And yet, seeing him, her world is unmade. He has a strength and weightiness about him. him. He's like a, how do I describe him? He's, he's a kingly type figure. He says, he looks like he's 20, but then she's like, how could he only be 20? He has kind of fullness to him. His beard is full, but also his wisdom. And it says it reminds her of Solomon. It says Solomon, for the first time in many years, the bright solar blend of king and lover and magician, which hangs about that name, stole back upon her mind. For the first time in all those years, she tasted the word King itself with all its linked associations of battle, marriage, priesthood, mercy, and power.

Think of David. Okay? Think of David, on the one hand, leading the men against Saul. But then think of David also, weeping, intimate friendship with Jonathan, totally platonic, writing these emotional Psalms, you know? Think ultimately the great model is Christ. Christ is the great model. if we focus upon Christ, we can't go astray. He's our model of masculinity. So much more to say about all this.

Yeah, boy, what a tough topic too. But hopefully at the very least, this could kind of put out there a little more for people to wrestle with. Hey, yes, let's resist the culture, but this hyper-masculinity problem is a real problem. And it's not beautiful. And it's not Christ-like. And we need to, we need to veer away from that as well. All right. Let you know, This is what fires me up and why I'm interested in having a YouTube channel. What I'm trying to do is people right now are aching for something better. And let's show them the way of Christ. It's so beautiful.

It's so wonderful. People are aching for that. Two upcoming notes to finish off with, check out the pro-eclacia conference. I can't be there. Nobody's paying me to talk about this. A friend sent me in for when I thought, oh, people on my channel would love this. I'm out of the country, so I can't be there. But it's June 10 to 12th of 2014 in Birmingham, Alabama.

if you're interested in ecumenical matters, which a lot of people who watch my channel are, this will be a great conference. The speakers include Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, and they're really great speakers. I'll put a link in the video description, check it out. If you're interested in those kinds of conversations, that could be a really cool opportunity. Second, two upcoming videos are a couple. I'm going to release my dialogue with Father Stephen DeYoung right after this one. Great dialogue.

Really enjoyed it. really enjoyed him. He's an Eastern Orthodox priest and academic that's on Solo Scriptura coming out the next video on Tuesday of this week, two days after this one. I also have a video on slavery in the Bible responding to atheist YouTubers who use the issue of slavery in the Bible to pour contempt upon Christianity trying to offer a response to that. I've worked really hard on that, studied a lot for it. I hope that could be helpful for people. I also have a video coming out on the meaning of Easter, which I'll release sometime around Holy Weekend. Hopefully Holy Weath.

I'll release it probably the day before Easter, maybe, and that's Saturday. Sometime in there. So hopefully that could be of interest to everybody as well. Still have the Adam and Eve video. I'm going to do a video on Adam and Eve responding to secular critiques of Adam and Eve. That'll come out soon too. So that's in the mix. A few others.

I got Conquest of Canaan responding to atheist YouTubers criticizing the conquest of Canaan. That'll be coming out. And this summer, I'm going to be doing a lot on arguments for the existence of God and then the issue of apostolic succession. Those are my two study projects this summer. All right, everybody, thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'm not an expert on this whole area of masculinity, but this is a basic point.

Hopefully it'll help, but I'm curious. If you think I missed something, let me know what it is. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. See you next time.